Thoughts on the Void

He sat, almost crashing against the chair. Smoke billowed from what was left of the house behind them. Ezra was fatigued and lost in thoughts of the old man’s legacy: how because of him it was fading, going the way of the samurai, propellar airplanes, and vcr’s.

He set out to protect them; to protect her. The roads had been long, but there was always a way home and a reason to move forward. Now the path was unsure, and it was a more sobering realization than he could bear.

“How do people do it?” The words stumbled out of his mouth.

Losing everything breaks some people. Otherwise normal lives can be twisted; moulded by the chaos. There are just some holes dug too deep for time to ever fill back in.

“They just do,” she put her hand on his head and felt through his hair. It wasn’t a good answer, but he didn’t need a good answer.

Hed grown up somewhere out there without her. She couldn’t imagine the pain he’d witnessed. Stories of the war seldom reached the villages, but what did make it’s way to The Outers wasn’t for the timid.

Somehow that was far away from her mind though. He’d found his home again, and she couldn’t help but feel at ease. Sure, the house was gone. Yeah, the old man was gone. And she didn’t know how they’d explain three corpses and an explosion.

But in that moment it didn’t matter. It just didn’t. Underneath the new gruff exterior he was the same kindhearted boy that she held as a kid every night the bombs dropped. That was all she needed.

“I tried -” he started, but was interrupted.

“Stupid boy.”

She stood behind him, unrelenting in the setting sun.